Thomas Wooden Community History
Early Beginnings (2005-2007) The Thomas Wooden Railway Community began in late 2005/2006 with users such as Tom Dublin who showed videos of their wooden trains. The user zeored began the community by showing other people with the same interest in Thomas Wooden Railway to begin uploading videos of wooden trains. Members like sonicandrotor and TRAINSARECOOL2 have influenced many other people to join in uploading videos to establish a community. Keekre24 The community was very small at the time, but then Keekre24 came along and made his Wooden Railway series: "Thomas The Tank Engine and Friends Wooden Railway Adventures." It gave the community the jump start that it needed. The series was a popular series, with Keekre getting over 800 subscribers and becoming the biggest user in the community. But by early 2009, Keekre24 was hacked and the account was shut down. Keekre then had to go and make a new account which was ThomasWoodenRailway. Keekre got his fanbase back and he is now still one of the most famous members in the community. Many users say that the first Thomas Wooden Railway videos they watched were his, and today he continues to draw more people to TWR. Downfall Around 2009, many members of the community began to leave either because of loss of interest in TWR. This would also be the first of the five times Keekre would leave. In 2010 users such as Sonicandrotor, and Rboffill began making less videos, and, eventually, Sonicandrotor closed his account, while many accounts such asTenCents01 and Rboffill were left idle. Other members that left were smudgersirhandel, Jamesis5, Henryfan88, and Percyno6. By early 2011, the community was in ruins with only a few users such as Sirtophamhatt291,thomasfreak808, and WoodenRailwayStudio (who were new users that joined in late 2010) and MrMPS2002 (who joined the community around 2008, but left and created another account in 2010) were around making videos, as well as new members that just joined like Enterprisingengine93 and TheHaza47. Another Rise The community basically is still getting brought back on it's feet, but not as successful as it was in 2008. Users such as LNERFlyingScotsman and HenryisGreat15 joined and began bringing back the community. In August 2011 Keekre returned and with that came back Rboffill for a short while, Percyno6 (another member that joined in 2008) and the community was half revived. Keekre also introduced the community to Twitter which is the new social networking site for the community to talk to each other. Downfall #2 Keekre decided to leave again in late 2011, causing the community to "die" yet again. In January 2012, the community had moved to Skype, which let the remaining members of the community talk voice to voice (and sometimes face-to-face). TRAINSARECOOL2 made a rant video calling the community dead, and only a good 7 users were active. In April, Keekre returned, but not as how everyone expected him to. This time he was selling his TWR items, which meant that he was basically never coming back again. This was topped off when Rboffill left the community, even though he kept his channel up until two years later. Rise #3 Around 4 weeks before Keekre's grand eBay sale, he decided not to sell his collection, and attempted to rejoin YouTube for as long as he could. The community, as always, came back to life, but it was still hurting from its wounds. Some new members had joined the community after Keekre's return, such as Bertramfan1, Jlouvier, ThomasWoodenEpisodes, Mainlineengine2, and TheBluebellEngine. The community accumulated a good amount of new members, and some older members also rejoined the community. Summer of Fights The community isn't as peaceful as it seems. The summer of 2012 was full of constant arguing and fighting over Twitter. One prominent argument was the lie that thomasfreak808 and SirTophamHatt291 were apparently cousins. The fight took place on Twitter during June around the hours of 10:00 pm and 11:45 pm pst between MrStepney55, TRAINSARECOOL2 and thomasfreak808 with LNERFlyingScotsman and ThomasWoodenRailway trying to set peace for it. Another fight that occurred was MrStepney55 and TRAINARECOOL2 against ThomasWoodenRailway. This happened in July and made ThomasWoodenRailway leave Twitter for roughly 2 weeks. Mainly with the fights, in 3 days everything was back to normal. The Community vs. SirTophamHatt291 In late 2011, SirTophamHatt291 (Jack) began looking up people's personal info. This disgusted the community enough that the many members began to revolt against him. On July 22, 2012, the first "Jack Confrontation" happened on Skype and the call included Jack himself, HenryisGreat15, WoodenRailwayReviews, ThomasWoodenRailway, Rboffill, Percyno6, and TRAINSARECOOL2, the latter of whom recorded the entire thing. This made Jack leave YouTube for the first time. Returning Jack began rebelling on Twitter and discussed his thoughts about returning. Late one night, Percyno6 and ThomasWoodenRailway began the Second Jack Confrontation. They discussed their plans with LNERFlyingScotsman, TRAINSARECOOL2, Rboffill, HenryisGreat15, and MrMPS2002. On that day, Jack was tricked by Keekre and Percyno6 into returning. Their motive behind this was so they could confront Jack and bring him down even harder than they had before. Second Confrontation The second confrontation led to an all-out war among the Community. On November 3, 2012, a Skype call occurred with TheHaza47, LNERFlyingScotsman, HenryisGreat15, ThomasWoodenRailway, and TRAINSARECOOL2. LNERFlyingScotsman added ThomasMania24 and Percyno6, while Johnny added MrMPS2002, and TheHaza47 added RailwayofSodor (Tyler). There Tyler gave proof of how Jack was a creep, and the issues of Jack being a creep from experiences of Keekre, Robert, and Damian were discussed This made Johnny freak out and leave the call, defending Jack and talking about his rights and whatnot. A new call was started, and the community appointed MrMPS to be their representative to persuade Jack to join the call. MPS tried to persuade Jack, but he revealed that Johnny had ratted the Community out to him and he refused to join the call, preventing the confrontation. Jack and Johnny later began "The Confederate Thomas Community." Later that night, Johnny admitted he got "brainwashed" by Jack and nearly gave up all of his friends for Jack. Johnny rejoined the Community and Jack later blocked Damian, Keekre, Robert, Johnny, and Tyler that night and went on a blocking spree the following days, blocking several other users, including BertramFan1, WRR, and MPS. Aidan at first supported Jack, but he then found out what Jack had done, and switched to supporting the Community stating almost everything Jack has done wrong on Twitter. This gave support for the community and Jack blocked Aidan. The Confederate Community was such a crazy idea that even thomasfreak808, who was Jack's best friend, disagreed with him and sided with the community. Some rumors arose that TheBluebellEngine and ThomasDuckFan were on Jack's side. In the end Jack Calloway came on Twitter and explained himself. He explained that Jack was lying just to get some members on his side. ThomasDuckFan explained that he had no idea what was going on, and joined the community. In the end the score was 23-1-1 with some users, such as 3HenryTheGreenEngine, being neutral throughout the war. Jack's loss caused him to ultimately leave Twitter, and eventually close both his YouTube channels. Downfall #3 In the final week of January 2013, the start of the third downfall began in a Skype call. Johnny kicked out Keekre24, and Keekre24 put on Twitter that Johnny needed new friends. Johnny tagged Aidan on Twitter, and the fight between Keekre24 vs Johnny and Keekre24 vs Aidan began. Percyno6 soon joined in the fight, siding with Keekre24. The teams looked like Keekre24 and Percyno6 vs Johnny and Aidan. MPS and Robert (LNERFS) were in the Skype call along with the other four. MPS sided with Johnny and Aidan, along with Robert. Robert and Johnny said they weren't on Aidan's side or against Keekre24 and Percyno6. From the outside, it would've looked like Keekre24 and Percyno6 vs Johnny, Aidan, MPS, and Robert. Although not as many users were involved as in the Jack War, many were included in this fight. The only 3 people who stated which side they were on were Keekre24, Percyno6, and Aidan, although Johnny and Robert said they were on Keekre24's team in an effort to end the "War." The users who were neutral sent out Tweets of their thoughts on the fight, mainly siding with Johnny and Aidan. In late April, Johnny and Keekre24 worked out their problems with one another, thus ending the third downfall of the community. Rise #4 With the previous fight involving Keekre24, Johnny, Percyno6, Robert, MPS, and Aidan over, a new user joined the community named Oliver Duck (Ted). Ted first was noticed by Percyno6. During this time, Percyno6 was making Season 3 of his series, WoodenRailwayReviews made a comeback, Jlouvier continued to upload his regular reviews, and EnterprisingEngine93 and HenryisGreat15 were both continuing their series'. In general, the community was on the rise with old, and some new members. TRAINSARECOOL2 left the community during this time, leaving after 5 years and 7 months in the community; oldest member in the community at the time. After he left, SonicandRotor became the oldest member of the community. Downfall #4 Originally considered not too big of a deal, the fourth downfall occurred when LNERFlyingScotsman left the community. Users like HenryisGreat15, Bertramfan1, thomasfreak808, and Oliver Duck became less active on YouTube and Twitter. Even with ThomasWoodenRailway, Jlouvier, Percyno6, and rising member ThomasWoodenEpisodes uploading, they couldn't make up for the lack of members. The final nail to this downfall was when ThomasWoodenRailway decided he couldn't take all the foreign countries claiming his videos and stopped uploading altogether. Soon many users would leave and by December of 2013 the community was just about dead with very few users uploading. Jlouvier's account was the only one to grow in this time period. Sudrian Radio War/ Anti-TWR Conflict In early summer 2013, during the 4th downfall the community was shocked to find that in a Sudrian Radio interview, Coaley (GoldWoodThomas) said that all Thomas wooden railway users, except EE93, made videos horribly done and he could never watch them, as they all had no scripts and no planning. Many of these accusations were false as many members do plan and use scripts. The community was also angered because Coaley had only watched EE93's series, and had not watched any other series from wooden railway users. The community took this in different ways. For some people this was the last straw in a build up of many users saying the same thing. Other users calmly pointed out TWR users who did have good videos. Some users just could not even make a comment. Users like LNERFlyingScotsman came back just to fight and defend their series. The war quickly spread from YouTube to Twitter and Skype. The people in the Sudrian radio show included GoldwoodThomas (who made the comment) and SudrianAfro. This war helped set up Sudrian Afro war. Another issue that fused this fight was WoodenRailwayReviews' review on the 2013 Flying Scotsman. Before the review started, he talked about how TWR users were being bashed around by users such as donaldthescotishtwin and SireEmEye since 2011, way before Sudrian Radio was even conceived. Also uploaded was a video called Woodenrailwayreview94, in which he talked about the upcoming Sudrian Afro War as well as the interview Coaley made his statement. Many months later in a Skype call, unknowingly someone added GoldwoodThomas and several community members not knowing about the war. GoldwoodThomas ended up apologizing. The war is over, although some users are still blocked over Skype, but that would most likely be because of later events. Sudrian Afro Conflict There is no clear way on how this war came to be. Some say it was when WoodenRailwayReviews first pointed out that on Ty's channel (SudrianAfro) it said no wooden users were allowed to use his music (it is to be noted that it included any users originally, but then it stated wooden railway users and several other groups were not to use his music). Others say it is when he became a major player on the sudrian radio conflict. All that everyone can agree on is bad feelings grew as time went on. On the other side of the war, users were fueled by WRR's parody video. Once again LNERFlyingScotsman returned to fight, and insults were treated back in forth between him and the community countering Ty and his supporters. Not all TWR users agreed with most of the community, including TheBluebellEngine and Oliver Duck, who both happened to also make Thomas music, but because of fear of breaking friendships. Oliver Duck stayed silent to the last day of the war. This war tore apart many bonds between the community and non TWR users leading to many blocks from former friends. For some time the war calmed down around the same time as the community did, but when Sudrian Afro found out Mainlineengine2 a Skype call with Sudrian Afro and some members to make them come to common understandings. Rise #5 By December 2013 the community was dead for the fifth time. Percyno6 even made a video talking about the history of the community and what everyone could do to help make it grow again. Many users were in an observation state, having stopped making videos, but still watching them, and were active on Twitter. Oliver Duck was not one of them. Oliver Duck left for a number of factors like lack of time and interest in making videos, not even knowing there was a slump. Suddenly, he announced that he would end TWR 2013 with a bang. Many users like LNERFlyignScotsman and HenryisGreat15 said that it would never work. But OliverDuck uploaded a video every day of December 2013. Other members, like MrMPS2002, Percyno6, and Jlouvier became more active too. Somehow Oliver Duck, with the help of the rest of the community, ended TWR 2013 with a bang. Over the next months users came back and new users joined. One noteworthy video was a video made by Percyno6 and Oliver Duck trying to help new users. TWRC Wiki This wiki that you are reading is another important part of the community. It was originally started by LNERFlyingScotsman, in 2012 with Percyno6, Keekre24, MrMPS2002 and Henreyisgreat15. The wiki had a long run of growth with new users and new pages. It almost had a page for every past member up to when Robert Left. When Robert left, some people where less active, but none the less it kept going. Hacking Even though the wiki has been attacked numerous times, the largest one happened in a period between the end of the Sudrian Afro War and the beginning of 2014. In Winter 2013, HenryisGreat15, LNERFlyingScotsman and a group of their friends took control, and modified or deleted most of the pages. Hours of hard work were lost as work was vandalized and destroyed. The wiki needed a full restart, a new one was made and the perpetrators minus Roberto and Johnny were banned. A New Start After the hacking only around half of the pages were recovered. All users gave up and let it die out for months. In March 2014, Percyno6, Oliver Duck, and MrMPS2002 set out to restore it. This movement lasted for almost a month. Many pages were made and remade, but soon people lost interest. In July 2014, Percyno6 and Oliver Duck decided to work on the wiki again. Many new pages were made, along with a new theme, background, logo, and layout. End of 2014 The community was doing well towards the end of 2014. Many users, including ThomasWoodenRailway, Percyno6, MilkTankerMedia, MrMPS2002, Oliver Duck, Enterprisingengine93, mainelineengine2, among other continued on with their series. Jlouvier's "Character Fridays" finished 2014 with it's 2 year anniversary. WoodenRailwayReviews ended 2014 by announcing a huge review on the White Face Troublesome Truck. He's doing this with the help of his college, planning on hopefully putting it on YouTube in Spring 2015 as his final review. ThomasWoodenEpisodes announced his plans for another remake at the start of the New Year. 2014 finished with 5 members who joined during the year. Some of the new 2013 and 2014 users have begun to make videos together as they see each other start to become a bigger part within the Community. 2014 marked the first year of crossovers. Thomasfan12341 Conflict In February 2015 tensions between several members over Skype came to a climax. Tensions had been building over a series of events over the span of over a year between primarily Oliver Duck, LegoLover117, RomanTWREmpire, HiroTheJapaneseTrain, and Thomasfan12341 just to name a handful. The users started above, wanted to isolate Thomasfan12341 from their Skype group and in general break connections with him, even with many of them being friends for several years. The reasoning for this was a series of events that remain privet that went on between these users. When this happened however, many users who did not know the direct facts that still were being kept confidential, sided on ether side and started to escalate the conflict. The conflict raged mostly on Skype and sometimes on twitter. It continued to around August between many members of the community that would occasionally pitch in. 2015 Community 2015 started off very active time for the community. First, bertramfan1 left in January, then DiamondThomas returned in February. Ryatron 12 and Annie C. joined, also in February and are among the first of many new members this year. Then, ThomasWoodenRailway released his first full length special in a complete video in March. It was entitled Claw of the Law and is one of the longest and most popular TWR movies. Then DuncanWoodenRailway joined the community, also in March. The later area of the school year was slow as normal, before really speeding up in June. MultiGreenThunder returned in July. Oliver Duck departed from the community in August. Jlouvier ended his long-running series, "Character Fridays", also in August. SkarloeyRailway01 ended his long running series of TWR remakes in September. Then MrMPS and EricPierre53 met up in real life and filmed a variety of crossover videos, also in September. culdee4 also joined at the start of September. EnterprisingEngine93 kicked off the fall by releasing "Culdee Fell" in October, a full-length special that was 3 years in the making. After that, the community was quiet for a while. In December, EdwardAlba was one of the first users to review a 2016 item; Streamlined Emily. A fairly obscure member known as toludwigfan (Now renamed as DieselDuckFan2001) which was made in 2010, had returned as DieselDuckFan2001. 2015 may have been the best year for the community since 2008. There were no where near the amount of fights that users had had with each other in 2012 or 2013. Also, the community was far more active then in almost any year since 2008. One of the biggest things that really made 2015 a big year for the community was the number of crossovers. Many users collaborated with each other, but some of the biggest ones were Wooden Railway Reviews and MrConductorFan1406's crossover review on Henry the Green Engine and MrMPS and EricPierre53's various crossover reviews. In 2015, the TWR Community Radio channel was a major way for the community to interact with each other. The shows would often have many different users discuss various topics. Tank Engine Studios would have two members leave it, but one new user joined it. ThomasWoodenEpisodes was the first to leave and would later be followed by Oliver Duck, due to his inevitable departure from the TWRC. HiroTheJapaneseTrain would replace ThomasWoodenEpisodes and Oliver Duck's spot was taken by LegoLover117 the following year. 2016 2016 featured many big events in the community. In January, WRR interviewed the founder of the Thomas Wooden Railway, Roy Wilson, and posted the interview on his channel. This interview was considered a big deal and prior to this, Wilson had never been interviewed by a community member. However the big events in January didn't stop there. MrMPS uploaded an episode of his Vlog series, TheMPShow, in which he met up with former TWRC member LNERFlyingScotsman in California. Later on in March, MPS would meet up with another user, this time it would be current TWRC member MrConductorFan1406. They filmed a comedic video where they announced a brand new podcast series called The Grease and Oil Podcast, hosted by them. The podcast became very well received. However, MPS' meet ups wouldn't end there; He would meet up with MilkTankerMedia multiple times. They did things such as going to a railway museum and seeing the movie Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Turtlesandthomas continued his popular series Sudrian Conflict. The series would feature far more voice actors than before including non TWR users. Turtles would also meet up with EnterprisingEngine93 (creator of Enterprising Engines) and Tines Sensahthe (creator of Tobias and the Half-Pariah). A crossover review, made by them, on Sir Handel was uploaded to Turtles' channel in June. This would lead to another, larger meetup in the following year. (To learn more, click here.) Many crossover reviews were released in 2016. Percyno6 did a crossover review with WoodenRailwayOnly (on Stafford) in February and another one with MultiGreenThunder (on BoCo) in March. The BoCo review ended in a cliffhanger, which was resolved in a review between Percyno6 and EricPierre53. MultiGreenThunder would have an ongoing story line throughout a few videos, where MrMPS wouldn't do a crossover with him. This would lead up to crossover with MPS on Introducing James that was released in September. Throughout the year, Percyno6, MultiGreenThunder and WoodenRailwayOnly have cameoed in each others videos. However, they are currently very secretive about what's going on. Newer users in the community had chances to shine in 2016. Annie. C's channel has continued to grow and a new user called TheStarSwitcher gained popularity through some well made reviews on items based off that year's Thomas special, The Great Race. Older users channel's also saw a growing fanbase. Multi reached 1,000 subs in January and ended with 1,500 by October. Eric's channel would pass 3,000 subs. Crossovers weren't the only popular collaborations though, HiroTheJapaneseTrain, LegoLover117, Roman'sTWREmpire, DuncanWoodenRailway, TrainKingJames, MikeMike123 and WoodenRS, all teamed up to create a remake of the Thomas VHS/DVD Thomas and the Special Letter. Each user would remake a certain episode and clips from their remakes were even used to remake the song You Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover. The remake with all of the episodes edited together was released on HTJT's channel in July. A followup to the remake, New Friends for Thomas, was released in October. This time, the team included WoodenRailwayOnly, EdwardTheGreat248 and MasterOfTheLemons. While there were a lot of videos this year, there were some channels that were a bit inactive, due to commitment to the Thomas Creator Collective, a series on the official Thomas and Friends YouTube channel. While the first episode was very well received, the collective became subject to a lot of controversy. While most respect the users involved with the channel, the high ups at Mattel have taken some criticism for ruining the series. Despite this, the series has been a big success and has grossed millions of views. TWRC members such as EnterprisingEngine93, ThomasWoodenRailway and MrConductorFan1406 (Vinnie) are in the collective. When Vinnie is busy, MPS will often get a guest to fill in for him on the Grease and Oil Podcast. The TWRC was also active on Twitter as usual. One of the most discussed topics was on Dewcision 2016. A contest where people could vote online which flavor of Mountain Dew got to stick around. The soda flavors were Pitch Black and Baja Blast. Baja Blast had previously been a popular drink in the community and was commonly associated with MrMPS. The contest resulted in many jokes and memes. In the summer, the community was being harassed and trolled by a group of small YouTuber users. However most members laughed off these actions as "unnecessary" and "childish". Luckily, the trolling would stop not long afterwards. During one of Rob's streams where he watched the Thomas special The Great Discovery, the joke made about Pierce Brosnan's delivery of the line "Welcome Stanley", would become a popular meme in the community. The phrase was often shouted and has become associated with Stanley's otherwise bland character, although the meme has since been disowned by many members of the community for being overused. That year's Thomas special, The Great Race, was a much discussed topic. Many reviews were made on characters new to the TWR from that special and the movie itself was much debated over. The TWR Critic released several remakes of songs from the movie which gained many views and overall contributed to his channel's success. While 2016 may not have been as popular a year as 2015 was, it was overall a good year with many meet ups and crossovers. 2017 Coming soon.